#touhou lore

[sylvyspritart]

Rest in peace Hieda no Akyuu According to Touhou lore, Hieda no Akyuu cannot become older than 30 She was canonically born in 1994, so now in 2024, 30 years have passed

[sannyo-appreciation-posts]

The FDS sneak peak page has huge implications

Call me crazy, but I'm starting to suspect there is a connection between this hair style and Shrine Maidens. (Yes, Yamajorou have a connection to Shrine Maidens)

I could also mention the only thing we know about Meira is she wanted the power of Hakurei, she easily could have been a Shrine maiden as well. But is PC98 which is basically the Wild West of Touhou so I think zun just thought it was cool.

finally we have Sanae, who is both a Shrine maiden and living god, and who is the only exception to this rule, having only like a half or two thirds of her ever changing hair matching this style.

Kotohime is, as far as I know, the only character with this hair style to probably brake this rule. But like Meira is PC98

It could simply be a conspiracy theory, but zun does like having design elements represent things and we certainly have a large sample size and there really are not many characters with this hair style.

[migueloharaschild]

i love trying to get into touhou knowing damn well i wont remember anyone's names (especially with how many there are), theres no youtube explanations of the lore, i feel like i need to know every single connection a character has so i get the fandoms jokes, and i cant read manga unless im forced to.

can i just like touhou for the characters and not be asked about ANYTHING about the lore.. "oh yeah remember when reimu-" no i dont

[incorrect-touhous-2]

Niche post time!

There’s a lot to be said about fan flanderization and fanon in the touhou community but my biggest bug is eiki. They did my girl eiki so wrong, she’s not this angry tsundere loli who sends people to the depths of hell for the slightest thing, she’s not even short!

She’s so interesting as a character because as the judge of good and evil, her ability is white and black judgement, she’s blunt and dosent sugar coat things, yet she often tries to help people change for the better. She often works through her breaks to give people advice, yet she’s described as patient and polite during lectures.

Her ability boils down things to eliminate grayness and cast judgment upon someone, but she also works to eliminate that grayness and lighten someone’s sentence, (even often going to warn a person directly sometimes) yet her method of doing this is blunt and direct, which is why most tend to avoid her lectures.

It’s worth noting that she’s a non human character judging human esk characters, like yokai. In her lore, it’s depicted that she was originally a statue that came to life after gaining enough devotion and only went up from there, which gives her the benefit of having an unbiased perspective, but also brings the con of not really knowing how to interact with human esk creatures due to being a statue, no wonder she’s so blunt and can come across as rude.

That isn’t to say she’s without flaws, she can be mean and unnecessary at times, even annoying, she’s judgmental (yknow, judge.) and very hard to approach. but it’s at least good to know where’s she’s coming from

And then there’s fanon eiki. That ignores all this and just depicts her as an angry shorty who hates people and only works, no breaks. And will hit you.

[meowstyle]

main stories of pc-98 / touhou 1-5. basically what the wiki says but reworded since i cant understand some of it and i hate using wikis

please inform me if i got anything wrong!! since i used the wiki!!! and those are very incorrect sometimes!!!!!

touhou reiiden ~ highly responsive to prayers :

reimu hakurei is a shrine maiden. more specifically, she watches over the hakurei shrine. although she cannot harm her enemies directly, she wields a yin-yang orb that can deal damage. the shrine was wrecked by something idk

there is basically no story until stage 5, where you can follow the gate into hell or go to makai. she did destroy what wrecked her shrine. both have different enemies. depending on the ending, the yin-yang orb can turn into a fairy or something that destroys everything. for the bad ending, it turns into a black hole that destroys earth.

nearly none of the characters appear again except mima, who resides in the hokora near the hakurei shrine. a hokora is like a tiny shrine

touhou fuumaroku ~ the story of eastern wonderland :

reimu battles multiple creatures and machinery, some examples being the bakebake, shrine tank, and some cannons. she proceeds to run into rika, who tries to lure her into a trap. fortunately, both her and her flower tank were defeated. then, she finds meira, a samurai fixated on obtaining the power of hakurei (idk) for herself. reimu beats her and enters the world of fantasies, faces the five magic stones and defeats them.

after stage 3 it can be inferred that she entered reimaden, which is implied to be located inside the world of fantasies. mima or the final boss returns from hrtp, and she summons her apprentice marisa kirisame before either of the two can battle. (which fun fact marisa is red haired here!!!!) after defeating her, she faces mima herself. reimu explains the hakurei clans real power: the controlling of the yin-yang orbs. they feed off of the users power, and once fully loaded, can release lots of energy at once. mima was still defeated, and sealed back into the hokora despite all attempts to get it.

touhou yimejikuu ~ the phantasmagoria of dim dream :

yumemi and chiyuri create a space/time traveling ship called the probability space hypervessel and use it to travel to gensokyo so that yumemi can prove her theory

reimu wanders into the garden and realized theres a grand ruin near the hakurei shrine. mima and marisa reappear and mima explains it:

the ruins were accepting "visitors" and the people in charge would give gifts to them according to the pamphlet. there is a small notice that says only one person is allowed inside, and to figure out who should enter, they have a battle between rikako, kana anaberal, ellen and kotohime. whoever gets in first meets chiyuri and yumemi.

in order to prove her theory, yumemi wants to beat the player, take them to the real world, and perform experiments on her. if the player beats yumemi she can grant them a wish, as chiyuri's pamphlets had false information on them.

touhou gensoukyou ~ lotus land story :

first, they defeat orange, an ordinary youkai who was just flying around before arriving at a blood-filled lake. they then find a vampire named kurumi, who is the guardian of said lake, and they battle her twice. they find a chasm in an island at the center of the lake. which at the end of the passageway, there is a mansion called mugenkan. they find the gatekeeper elly, who explains that they are at the boundary of fantasy and reality.

she explains that the other character had defeated her already and entered the mansion. after defeating the

mansions housekeepers, they meet once again in a dark chamber in the center of the mansion. reimu accuses marisa of planning something nefarious, to which they both battle once again. whoever wins tells the other to leave before venturing farther into mugenkan. the remaining protag awakens a youkai, yuuka kazami, who despite her tiredness has very powerful attacks. yuuka panics and runs away after being defeated.

touhou kaikidan ~ mystic square

large amounts of youkai and demons are traveling from makai to gensokyo.

within the cave, whoever you chose as the player (reimu, marisa, mima, yuuka) finds the guardian of the gateway to makai, sara and defeats her easily before beginning a high-speed flight through the boundary between worlds. they find a demon travelling in the opposite direction named louise. the player arrives in makai, then soon being attacked by alice margatroid and her dolls.

after defeating her, the player flies toward a dark fortress in the distance, encountering themselves with the witches yuki and mai, who failed in attempting to stop the player from advancing forward.

entering the forest pandemonium, they fly through multiple crystal designs while battling even more enemies. at the top, they are greeted by shinki, who explains in a nice manner that the demon invasion is due to a civilian travel agency whomst arranged tours to gensokyo. before the player can figure this out or make any sense of it, they are interrupted by yumeko, who insists that she leave so she may battle them. after fighting the maid, shinki re-introduces herself. it turns out that she was in fact the god of makai, and alongside that, had created it.

re-stating what i said earlier: please tell me if i got anything wrong, missed any important details, etc.

[sannyo-appreciation-posts]

Sometimes I think about the fact Kosuzu casually owns the Necromomicon and the entire Lovecraftian mythos is sitting in Gensokyo waiting for Kosuzu to read it (conveniently in Kanji as well)

[sannyo-appreciation-posts]

I've got a super interesting Zun comment translation here

This Sannyo Zun quote is great. Zun seems to know the annoyance of smoke makes smokers more disliked more than necessary. Though Sannyo's power using the smoking to help those around her instead of being a nuisance.

This also implies there is a specific necessary amount of dislike for smokers which is proper

[sannyo-appreciation-posts]

Unconnected Marketeers fun facts and trivia you probably haven't heard,

Neat trivia for everyone from Touhou 18. Sources referenced in the text.

Mike was the only Demo character to not need to suffer the "Shoplifting" cheat, because she's the first boss.

Supposedly, according to her Omake.txt, Mike came from the outside world. She was originally training to be a proper maneki-neko for Gōtoku-ji, a Buddhist temple in Tokyo, but she was bullied into leaving and didn't finish her training, she's now happily free to do what she wants.

This implies all real world maneki-neko need training to work.

Takane is the final boss of Touhou 18.5, and is presumably the only end boss to surrender immediately upon being approached, but she is mugged by a power crazed Marisa anyway and cries that she's insane.

Yamajorou have special techniques for producing large quantities of quality goods cheap. This is written in Takane's card.

Takane is totally a Phantasmal Boss. Chimata is the final boss, then you go to Nitori who is the Extra boss, then Takane is the Phantasmal Boss. See?

Sannyo is named after the Komakusa. The "queen of Japan's mountain flowers". All her Spellcards are named after different alpine Japanese flowers, and even her nons are shaped like flowers. She keeps them in her den in Lotus Eaters 29 and 30. And this, alongside her dragon folding screen was scripted by zun according to the script Mizutaki revealed. So Sannyo is occasionally drawn with alpine flowers because she's seemingly so fond of them.You can also see color patches along stage 3 implying they are highland flowers as well.

Even though she says "spoiling the taste of her tobacco " as a midstage catchphrase, she happily laughs and says her tobacco sucks in Lotus Eaters 30, so she was making a private joke to herself in Unconnected marketeers.

Hilariously, Sannyo got hit in the face with the Shanghai doll card when she was trying to talk during the demo. Art has been made of this.

Due to an error, Sannyo's clothes were constantly torn during the demo; leading to a ton of her fan art assuming that's just how she looked.

Bonus Sannyo facts, sighting in blue:

Misumaru's resting face, used for reference has probably the angriest eyebrows in all Touhou.

Misumaru makes a living of making Jewelry, Mostly beads. This is in Reimu's blank card ending.

She tried to brag to Reimu she made the Yin-Yang orbs in that ending, but Reimu was hilariously not impressed.

In Sakuya's post fight dialog with Momoyo, Misumaru shows up and gets invited to the SDM to chat with Patchouli. Sakuya expects an exposition dump, but after getting interrupted by Momoyo, she just shortens to answer Sakuya's question with a single "just don't dig that stuff up "

(If you read that exchange in text it looks like Sakuya is keeping up. But the in game faces make it clear Sakuya is confused and Misumaru is exhausted talking)

Tsukasa doesn't like getting her clothes dirty according to her 18.5 title card.

She also has had a habit of entering people's houses uninvited even before touhou 19. In Marisa's blank card ending, Tsukasa brakes into Marisa's house to tell her a bunch of stuff and Marisa complains about "Why are you in my house " basically.

In Marisa's post fight dialog with Momoyo. Marisa convinces Momoyo to let her take gems if she keeps it a secret, but Tsukasa pops up and reveals shes spying, and says Momoyo would get into trouble until she gets intimated by Momoyo.

Megumu is based on a pretty interesting god/ tengu mixup called Izuna Gongen. Hilariously this god is a tengu who stands on the back of a white fox. (I wonder who that could be?) This is because there was a either a real or possibly mythic tactic of tying a crow to a fox and setting it on fire to release into an enemy camp. It latter somehow became a god who offered "great tengu barley rice" to a village, saving them from starvation. Which is where her UM card comes from.

According to Momoyo's post fight dialog for Sanae, "Iizunamaru's always badmouthin' Moriya Shrine". She also says Megumu's a combat lover.

According to her 18.5 title card, Megumu is a "great tengu who loves festivals" this has since appeared and been acknowledged out loud in some fan skits and MMDs, .

Chimata gets bed ridden in Marisa's blank card ending. She's so traumatized by Marisa's inability to engage in basic commerce that it gives her nightmares.

(Also, even though she has unique blank card dialog getting bullied by people making fun of her card on stage 6, no English blank card run is on YouTube. So even though jokes and skits have been drawn for it in Japan, the English community probably isn't familiar with them)

Momoyo Himemushi is based on the brutal but beautiful arcade quarter eating shmup, Mushihimesama. It's bug theme is just as iconic as it's gameplay. This is also why she's got "princess" themeing.

She talks about Megumu enthusiastically in basically every route.

Weirdly for an extra stage, a different character can show up and interrupt Momoyo into having a 3 way conversation depending on who you beat her with.

(I used to assume "that was a blast" was a line she said with every character but it looks like she cuts off before saying it sometimes)

According to the drinking fight party post stage text and title card dialog for the Rainbow Dragon Cave stage in 18.5, Momoyo is a "Centipede Popular Amongst Youkai".